- Recent Photo Uploads -

Every year or so I dig through this site and do house cleaning on the images that I’ve posted. I look at every photo and end up deleting what I no longer feel is my strongest work. The last time I did this, I also scrubbed some of the other content, and removed the information for my Kodak Tourist from the hardware section. I’m thinking I might have to add it back soon.

The last time I used the camera was the summer of 2004 when I loaded a roll of Provia 100 into it, and never finished that roll. I think I kind of wrote it off since it was scale focus, and at the time, I wasn’t comfortable with scale focus. I wanted something with a range finder to be super accurate, so I never really used the camera.

Flash forward four years. Now that I’ve been shooting with my Leica on the street, and am getting more & more comfortable with it, I’ve come to realize that having the camera focused to a certain distance, and knowing how to work at that distance makes getting a shot incredibly fast compared to just haphazardly positioning myself, and taking a moment to focus with each shot.

With this stigma about working without a range finder gone, I pulled the tourist out of the box it has been in for the past four year. Knowing what I know now about shooting on the street. what I’ve discovered amazed me.

The Kodak Tourist is the most agile, ergonomic camera I’ve ever held.

1. The balance when held in the right hand is amazing. The weight is significantly less the my M3’s, so the torque on the hand when trying to hold it at certain angles that exists with M3, just isn’t there. As far as I can tell, there really isn’t a way to hold it with one hand that requires the repositioning of the hand into a way that makes tripping the shutter awkward, or impossible. This means it should be very easy to approach a subject with the camera hidden behind my back, or to the side, and still be able to raise to the eye for a quick shot without having to juggle the camera. If any of you have ever shot in the past few years with a camera that doesn’t look like a dSLR, compact point & shoot, or a cell phone, you should understand the benefit of extra stealth. Anyone who spots something this different looking will be staring at you from blocks away, and that often doesn’t make for the best photos.
2. The Leica family of cameras are known for their quiet shutters. Let me just say this; next to the sound of the Tourist , the M3 sounds like a thunderclap. The same goes for advancing of the film. It is just dead silent.
3. I have two tourists. They collectively cost me $20.

I have some film spooled to 620 so it will fit this camera, and have patched the pinholes that have developed in the bellows. The next time the sun decides to show itself around here, I think I’ll take it our for a spin and see how it goes. If all is well, I might have to add back it’s info page, and have a few photos to show from it. Ideally, the different in quality of the lens, can be more then made up for by the increased negative size. Then I can have a good compromise for when I want better resolution then the M3, but don’t want to break my arm carrying my Speed Graphic around.

Last week I caught wind of an Iraq War protest being held a block away from where I work, and was conveniently starting right when I would be leaving the office. I grabbed my M3, a pocketful of hp5+, and attended the rally to do some rogue photojournalism.

The entire set can be seen on my Flickr page. This set to be specific.

Please take a look at the latest photo I just uploaded, “Wesly Ngetich, 2007.”

I looked at it once when I proofed it, determined the flare and blur was too much, and put it aside.

That was seven months ago. So why is this image posted now if I didn’t like it?

Well. Today I received a news alert to this article.

“While with his tribe Monday, Ngetich became involved in the political violence that has swept through Kenya since the disputed re-election of President Mwai Kibaki on Dec. 27.”

“According to information provided by his manager, Hussein Makke of West Chester, Pa., Ngetich was killed by a shot through the chest with an arrow in his hometown region of Trans Mara, Kenya. Ngetich, married with three children ages 8, 6 and 1, was 34.”

That was enough for me to pull out the contact sheets from that day and look at it again. With new eyes, and a somber mood given the unfortunate circumstances of the subject, the photo now open up, and present to me its true story.

Seven months ago, I was caught up in the technical failures of it, but now I see past that haze, and can pick out subtle details that I hadn’t noticed. I had never seen before that he wasn’t running, but instead gliding as both of his feet are off the ground as the pounding sun pushes him along. Do I need worry that I didn’t throw enough flash out there to illuminate his face? Not as all. We see a runner, in perfect runners form. All the ID we need is the number on the bib.

Am I just over reacting and artificially trumping up a blurred photo in my own head? Maybe. Maybe not. I’ll let you make your own decision if its good or not. But, I guess for me, that this is just a cold, hard lesson on how context can trump technique. It is just sad that such a tragedy had to happen for me to realize what I had captured.

I recently purchased a Classic Softrelease from Tom Abrahamsson at rapidwinder.com for my M3. As-is the shutter release is very smooth, and quite easy to release, but I wanted it to be even more effortless. Would be especially useful for when I’m shooting with gloves in the winter, or want to set off the shutter by just giving the camera an evil glare.

Browsing the various forums for user feedback on Tom’s release, the negative comment often came up that the release makes it really easy to take pictures when you don’t want to. For example, like when the camera is in a case. Many people just deal with it as a trade-off for , and others couldn’t stand it, and stopped using the release all together. I knew I wanted the large surface release, so I ordered mine to see if I was one of the people who could deal with it or not.

Shooting with the release was a dream. It gave my M3 exactly the feel I was looking for, but as time passed, I noticed I had to often cock the shutter before taking a shot. I processed the first roll that I shot with the Abrahamsson release and started counting. One, Two, Three . . . . Seven misfired frames on a roll of thirty-six! And possibly more that were taken uncapped with the camera in focus hanging around my shoulder that I can’t distinguish from my normal sloppy street photography.

19% wastage seemed a bit unruly, but I really like the feel, so I wasn’t going to give up on. The immediate options were to not cock the shutter after shooting each frame, or to remove the release for transportation. Neither solution was something I wanted to pursue.

So, sitting here late at night I found a small hair tie left by one of my female friends. I looked at it, then I looked at my M3. A light bulb flicked on, and I believe the problem has been solved.

With the hair tie wrapped under the release three-four times, I physically cannot apply enough pressure to the button to have it shoot a frame. Yet, it connected very loosely and can easily be removed in one second. I threaded it through the ring on my strap lug, and it will always right there, ready to prevent my camera from shooting when I don’t want it to.

I’ll try this for a few weeks and report back.

As of late I’ve been attempting a lot more street photography then I’ve ever done before. Most of what I shot so far sucks, but that is besides the point. The real point is that a few days ago I started reminiscing about using my Speed Graphic hand held, and got the notion in my head to get it ready, and if we ever get some sunlight in this town again, spend a day on the street with it.

I bought an old 90mm press lens a while back, but never used it hand held. So, I figure I’ll give that guy a go when this outing happens. I’m not going to recalibrating the rangefinder for it since the DOF is pretty massive. Instead I’ll just make about three distance markings on the board somewhere and calibrate to that. I really should only need two of them. One for close, and one for not so close. Combine this without a usable viewfinder for the focal length, and I’m really going to be roughing it. I can’t wait.

The other thing I’ve been doing in preparation is trying to figure out how to actually release the shutter. The focal plane is always easy, but the speeds I’ve measured of it don’t exactly progress in nice even stops, so I think I’ll use the leaf shutter that I recently had CLA’d at Flutot’s Camera Rrepair. Playing with cable releases, the old Kalart one that attaches itself to the camera to make a thumb trigger doesn’t seem to like to set the 90mm’s shutter off, so I’ll have to resort to my standard cable release. After playing around with how to hold the camera, and use this release, I came up with the following method that looks promising. Basically, I slide my left hand under the strap to hold the camera, and then thread the cable release between my hand & the camera’s body between my index & middle finger. This lets me wrap my index finder around the cable release to trip the shutter by squeezing my index finger the same way that one would fire a pistol. This frees up my right hand completely to do things like focus, change shutter speed, advance film, fend of evil doers, etc. . Mouse over the image below to see the trigger release in action.

While we are on the subject of handheld 4×5, I just created a set on my Flickr page that shows a good selection of the better shots that I’ve shot handhold in the past. More are there then you’ll find in my gallery here. You can view them here.